:: A quick train trip? Not really... : :
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Are you even in the right city Andrew? Strassburg yeah?...
Went to Strassburg on the weekend. A group of trainees from Luzern (a huge group that have all been working together for some time now) are all finishing up at the end of this month, had organised a weekend there.
We just caught a dirt cheap train - 25€ for 5 ppl return - bargain. Beautiful little town, I loved it. This is not why I blog today though. For a good account of Strassburg check here
The real reason I am inspired to write is to tell the tales of Andrew, the new trainee in town, previously of Seatlle, he now rides the GM Wheat Combine Harvester with us here at Syngneta.
The day started with 4 of our 5 cheap-as ticket crew waiting for Andrew. Informed via Cindy (by him the night before) that he would be at the station an hour ahead of time, we infact had 4 minutes till depature time, whilst he was still heading into town on the tram.
Running and nearly missing the train ourselves, the four of us just made it and had to leave a man behind....
A phone call later and Andrew was going to catch a train 2 hours later and meet us there. We figured we would meet up with the group, have some lunch, a quick look around and then meet Andy at the Cathedral - a massive church and centre piece of the town.
Well, we arrived, we did lunch, we met the Luzern ppl and then after a brief walk around we met at the cathedral and waited for Andy to show...No sign of him...Text messages back and forth, him saying he was at the cathedral, us saying that he infact wasn't....Finally after 2 hours of waiting and searching for the poor lad, we received a message that he was going to head back home.
Extremely cold (don't even get me started on the crap weather we are having in the middle of summer), slightly annoyed and having not seen much of anything, we journeyed on to see the European Parliament - a real funky round building that reminded me a little bit of the record company building in the movie Ford Fairlane - not sure if it was maybe Tower records? Anyways....
Back into town we found a restaurant that resembled Denny's but was self-service, called "Flunch" we had a great all you can eat meal really cheap and received another message from Andy that he had missed his train and wanted to catch the train home with us at 23:05.
To give an idea of what this looks like, we caught a 12:17 train, arrived around 14:00; waited from 16:00 - 18:00 for Andy; walked about, shopped and then had dinner at 21:00 and then had a beer before making our way back to the train. Andy was lost from about 15:00 - 23:05. Suffice to say by the time we found him back at the train station, he hadn't seen much; confused the Prefecture (old govt. building) with the Parliament (new and funky) and had been drinking to drown his sorrows.
Ah well, there is always the next trip!
Oh and did I mention he also got stiffed a 31CHF ticket to Strassburg one-way aswell? I don't think he really is a fan the way I am of Strassburg!
